I was watching a robin fly after a finch — the smaller bird
chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent
in light-winged earnest chase — when, out of nowhere
over the chimneys and the shivering front gardens,
flashes a sparrowhawk headlong, a light brown burn
scorching the air from which it simply plucks
like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three
cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence
closing over the empty street when the birds have gone
about their own business, and I began to understand
how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small
elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth
strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.

—

This is from Still Life with Waterfall: Poems by Eamon Grennan, published by Graywolf Press, 2002.

This is such a powerful style of poetry – a simple story, a profound revelation, nothing more. There is so much packed in here.. this scene of “earnest chase”, the hawk’s “simple plucking” of the robin, the eerie silence ensuing. And then, this moment of epiphany, when I realize, I have just witnessed something here of my own vulnerable life. Thanks for sharing.